Culled
by Youkomon
Summary: [Sequel to Her Answers.] No one said finding the answer was ever going to be easy. But maybe Jinmay was just asking the wrong questions...


Yeah…we all know Jinmay brings out the best in Chiro…but what about the other way round? What effect does he have on her personality? Myinterpretation of it is that he is her only real link to humanity in a sense.

Look, an overrated sequel…you will read…and then you will either comment or pound me into a bloody pulp. Your choice.

Return of the clichés! Old wives tales! And some person named…anon. Credit goes to them for their borrowed quote.

_Mom, why is that  
the things we were brought up with  
are destroyed by ourselves, as the days keep coming?…_

…_With my hands With my hands  
With my hands, be my last... - Hikaru Utada (translated from 'Be My last')

* * *

_

You're probably wondering why I left. Well it wasn't because of you. It was me. It always was me.

You just ever gave up. Did you? I just never noticed the…realness of the effort you put in. I remember once pointing out a group of wildflowers I liked in one of Gibson's science books and you smiled.

I got soaked that night in the downpour. Figures heaven would be against a child of metal rather than one of flesh construct, moulded in God's design. Eventually, after screaming your name out into that unforgiving darkness for hours, you emerged with a beckon of joy in your grin. Even before you said a word I saw the green stems climbing through the layers of your hands, each one tipped with my chosen flower. Their natural yellow glittered in the raindrops, outshining the cheap plastic of those fake flowers smothering the windows of shops in the main square. Beautiful contraptions of nature never meant for my unreal eyes.

See, that's the thing. No replica can ever be as good as the real thing. Mother nature wins against man. Wildflowers are unblemished by plastic ones. Humans conquer robotics.

'**_Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.' _**

But you all forgot about my design. About my purpose. About how I was a fighter too. Ironically enough, I guess I forgot as well. But that was the fault of the Skeleton King. I enjoyed ripping his head apart, fibre by fibre, watching the redness run dry and gather into a smear of pain across my remorseless fingers.

Do you know what happens when a living organism's very existence is in jeopardy? They fight. They adapt. They evolve. They kill. They do anything to survive. It's quite selfish really.

My selfishness stems from the programming I was given. It was never mine to begin with. I can't evolve like nature can. But I sure can adapt. Like you said I was beginning to 'master my powers'. I became stronger, faster, able to resize at will. It scared me really, how fast I was changing. I looked at a little boy one day and realised than with a writhing heartbeat I could've walked two steps and torn off his head.

Bim-bang. Extermination. That word makes death sounds more like a mechanism doesn't it?

'**_If this is death, then I don't think much of it.'_**

And then…it happened. Something jogged in my circuits, a homing device. I had to go, it was automatic and free will was never supposed to be my central function. I don't think I was built toaccommodate for so grave a design flaw. So I went. I saw. I discovered. I met my creator. I asked questions. He answered them.

An answer…one longing answered. And I set off for 'home' with a restored and rebooted program, the way I had always been designed to be. My creator fixed me and finally stopped that infernal racket hovering in my chest. My mechanic drum of metaphorical feelings was dried up and there was a drought of silence. I love the quietness that came with the absence of a heart.

'**_Absence makes the heart grow fonder.'_**

I went back to Shuggazoom, seeing a battered Super Robot lagging in the part, heaving over at it's contours with all the heaviness of failure. You ran up to my sturdy shadow, a worried question in your eyes.

"_Jinmay…why did you leave the city? I left you in charge…I trusted you! We all did!"_

"_My name's not Jinmay. That's a human name. I am not human. I am model 18547XO5 of the Plitoner's military defence."_

I was created to infiltrate cities as a human…and rip them apart from the inside as a robot.

You never paid enough attention to your tactics lessons did you? Pity. I would have loved a real challenge. I certainly paid attention to mine.

I watched the heartbreak crawl across your face as the air choked past your lips, staining them into an ugly blue. Your fingers were clawing at my silver arms as you withered and battled in the embrace of your lover. I squeezed tighter, my fingers clamping around your airway harshly, metal biting into the softness of the skin. Because it was the most human thing to do.

I could've blown you up with a bomb. I could've scissored out your heart and burnt you out with my lazars. I could've killed you like a machine. But I didn't. I killed you in the most humane way I could. You deserved that at least. To die by a human-like hand than by a weapon of mass destruction.

I watched you fade away from everything you loved.

"_Jinmay…don't…stop this…"_

Your eyes were desperate, the hope burning through me like a candle of hope you held in the recess of your mind. It would've touched me. If I'd had a soul, that is.

"_No…please…"_

You really didn't give up did you?

"_Jinmay…I love you…"_

I let you go. And I stared, shocked and feeling more alive than I've ever felt, even when the chaotic blood of millions had been wiped across my moulded form time and time again. It was like breathing…if I even contemplated the prospect. I was alive. My program was broken.

'**_My bittersweet salvation.'_**

**Clank, clank.**

My heart awoke.

Gladness is like a tide. It ebbs away but comes back just as strong as it was from the day we've first met. I'd whooped then, spun round in a pivot of graceful salvation and lowered myself, held you in my arms with a blooming longing unfurling in my 'ghost'.

And you were dead.

'**_When I think of death, I only regret that I was unable to see your human eyes again…unless my heart is right and my spirit will walk on after my inhumanity has rusted away…and my body is gone.' _**

I don't have any more questions.


End file.
